Reality TV star Jade Goody's estate, former MP Neil Hamilton and his wife Christine, and a former aide to Tony Blair are among eight of the latest claimants to settle their cases against News of the World for phone hacking.

The former Blue Peter and This Morning presenter John Leslie has also settled his case and accepted "substantial damages", the high court heard on Friday. Matthew Doyle, who was Blair's deputy director of communications in Downing Street, has settled his claim for "misuse of private information and breach of confidence" and accepted damages and costs.

Leslie, who presented the BBC's Blue Peter from 1989-2004 and This Morning from 2001-2002, had his phone hacked while working on the ITV programme. "The claimant was targeted by NoW because of a number of well publicised allegations concerning his private life," Leslie's lawyer told the court.

"The claimant was deeply angry and upset to discover that owing to deliberate destruction of documents by the News of the World, he will never find out the true extent to which his privacy was invaded," said the statement.

No statement was made on behalf of Goody, who died in 2009.. Jeff Brazier, who had two children with the reality TV star, settled his case in February. Brazier was contacted by the police in late 2011 and found that a number of details about his private life appeared in a file prepared for the News of the World.

The eighth person to settle was James Perring, a close friend of TV presenter Davina McCall.

At the same hearing, the high court heard a statement from Elle Macpherson saying she did not sack her former adviser Mary-Ellen Field because she believed she was leaking stories to the press.

Macpherson's declaration, made by her QC Heather Rogers, is the first public statement she has made on the issue that has been central to the case of Field, who was one of the first batch of people to sue News International in relation to phone hacking.

Field has been one of the most outspoken alleged victims of phone hacking and has been a prominent figure in the Hacked Off campaign for press reforms.

News International has applied to have her case struck out and, at a hearing in December, the company's barrister Michael Silverleaf described her case as "fantasy".

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